Susan Bozic: The Dating Portfolio

Opens Tues July 21, 7-9pm. It's said you can tell when two people are really and truly in love by the way they look at each other. Vancouver-based photographer Susan Bozic satirizes the look and existence of true love, as it's popularly understood, in her series The Dating Portfolio. She stages scenes from a perfect relationship, casting herself (like Cindy Sherman) as the perfectly content girlfriend to Carl. He's good-looking, statuesque, a bit stiff though. Carl's a mannequin. "The humour presented in this work is the first stage in reading the images and is intended to draw the viewer in," says Bozic in an email. "The longer you look, the more psychologically complex they become." The artist frames love as just another product packaged and marketed for mass consumption. "We're constantly being sold on the ideal, whether it's projected onto people or things. The romanticized images in The Dating Portfolio are a surrender to those ideals." –Sean Flinn